“I think this might be the oolong that I preferred most out of all the Teavivre samples I recieved! It’s just so dark and roasty and perfect for fall. I think if I had a bag of it, I’d...”
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From Teavivre

Brew: 3-4 teaspoons for 8oz of water. Brew at 212 ºF (100 ºC) for 1 to 3 minutes (exact time depends on your taste – a longer time will give the tea a stronger taste and color)

Health Benefits: Wu Yi tea has the highest amount of polyphenol which is a natural antioxidant that comes in the tea. Many signs of aging include dark spots, wrinkled skin, roughness and related blemishes-people have reported a decrease of these symptoms with regular drinking of wu long tea.

108 Tasting Notes

Oh, I like this tea. But for me it is not floral, it is sweet and fruity. I can’t stop thinking about the tasty cake with apricot pieces in it while drinking and smelling this oolong. Very nice for everyday drinking and it is great for black tea lovers as well.

Preparation

Oh no, it’s happened :( :( I have found a tea sample from a lovely Steepster, and I have no clue who it’s from. Well, that’s slightly untrue – it’s probably from Sil, and might be via Raritea, but I’m not sure. That’s my best guess though, since I don’t think I’ve received any of this from Teavivre previously.

Anyhow! I need to brew up the second half of the sample more carefully, but YUM! What a delicious tea. I just love roasty oolongs so incredibly much, and this is a great example. Makes me want to grab all my Verdant ones and start brewing them up soon, too (that’s not a half-bad idea, actually. I’ve been craving straight tea recently, more than flavoured.) Can’t write much detail here, other than this was amazingly delicious and I want more :D I’m sure the resteep was good too, though I’ve been brewing up so many things lately that I can’t tell one from another, and mix re-steeps together if they smell compatible enough. Haha.

I have been committing tea sacrilege with this wonderful tea…but you know, it really works for me. I’m so busy at work that I can’t make myself a proper cup, so decided to start doing ‘grandpa style’ until I find my new work groove.

I have discovered that I really like grandpa style with roasted oolongs, and will probably continue to drink them in this manner. I really like the mineral, salty notes that seem to come through when I brew in this manner. And when the flavour starts to become weak I just add a few more leaves.

I expected to find some strong bitter notes with grandpa style and oolong, but I didn’t get that. This tea holds up really well to this style of brewing. When i’m out, I will definitely see if my other roasted oolongs do as well.

Now that I’ve gone grandpa style, I probably won’t go back (at least with this tea)….so easy, convenient and ridiculously delicious.

From Marshaln…throw small amount of leaves in cup/mug of choice, add H2O and keep adding H2O to same leaves until flavor weak or gone. I can usually top up 3 or 4 times before adding a FEW (3 to 5 leaves) more leaves.

Here I am to enjoy a big red Robe. Its leaves are long and have an incredible volume .

The smell is forested, mostly wooded . This type of tea is very famous and is even extremely famous but I read anything and everything about it ( picked by monkeys wearing red dresses in honor of the emperor, tea trees dressed with a red dress honoured by the emperor to thank this tea to have healed the mother of the Emperor … ) I cannot tell why this tea is called like that but it grows well on Mount Wuyi and that’s the point.

A translucent orange liquor is obtained.

A the first sip , my olfactory impression is confirmed , I have the impression of riding into a forest : moss, mushrooms , bark, wet earth , nuts … that’s what this tea reminds me immediately.

Mushroom is for me the most prominent flavour followed by wood. This tea also has a mineral note , some rock-y taste , which must be explained by its origin.

Some cocoa notes are also present . The texture is very light, very refreshing , and while cooling I begin to detect a little fruity note .

This tea is complex. I imagine it must be very suitable for Gong Fu Cha session and reveals incredible flavors in short, multiple infusions. But … it is already very good Western style .

Preparation

As I shuffled out of the bedroom this morning to find that my wife was WAY too awake for 5:30am, she very perkily asked me if I wanted some of the Big Red Robe she was brewing. I think I must have grunted yes, because that’s what was in my travel mug when I left the house. It was so good. Woke me up as much as coffee would have (which wasn’t much, I still napped most of the way to work – I wasn’t driving, I take the bus). This tea was delicious. I know I’ve had a da hong pao before, but the flavor has never struck me like this. It was rich and grassy and leafy, tons of depth and interest. Usually oolongs have a bit of a buttery creamy finish, but this had a much sharper flavor – in a good way. Definitely going to be one that I reach for often from now on.

Preparation

My new way of trying tea samples is to steep three different ones at once…maybe that’s not the best way of doing it, but it keeps me more focused and distracted from everything else. So that’s just what I do now. XD
Out of the two other teas that were steeping right next to this one, this tea smelled the strongest. It smells incredibly roasty.
The flavor is pretty much the same. Think I’ll enjoy this one more later on when I’m back on my roasty tea kick. xD

Definitely. only gongfu for these types of oolong. you would see such difference and might fall in love with them. i find the best parameters for me 5-6g for 100 ml rinse and super short steeps, flash, like 2-3-5 sec tops. try it please. you dont even need gaiwan, you can place leaves in a steeper and just lift it up. rinsing is a must to remove dust and extra roast/smoke.

Heh, I am definitely gonna get a gaiwan sometime. Maybe sometime after all the holiday sales because there are just so many teas I wanna buy. But when I’m looking into one more I am definitely hitting you up!

I thought I didn’t really care for this type of oolong, but it has been more than a year since I have had one and I’ve never tried TeaVivre’s so I decided to give it a shot. I’m actually really enjoying this tea! It is toasty, roasty and satisfying. I like the sweet plum/raisin notes on top and the oolongy tang. I am a Big Red Robe convert! YAY!

When Teavivre offered to send me more samples, I immediately had to request this one. Both because the school I went to had a mascot named Big Red (think McDonald’s Grimace, but red) and because our newest baby, a little redfoot tortoise, is named Da Hong Pao! We have three cats and a tortoise, and after the first cat, we got into the habit of tea names. We’ve an orange cat named Pekoe and a grey cat named Earlie. So, of course, when we decided on a red foot tortie, Da Hong Pao made perfect sense! We call her Pao or Pao Pao for short. For the record, our first cat is a brown tabby who is named Rosabella, but would have been Chai if we had been thinking of tea names back then.

Anyhoo, I don’t know that I’ve ever had a Da Hong Pao before this, and I’m not going back through 1000+ notes to figure out if I have. But dang, I should have! This is roasty, toasty goodness and I think I’m in love. Reminds me of home, with tobacco smoke and an underlying nuttiness that takes this tea to another level. I’m on my second steep of a sample packet in a Bubble Teapot (24 ounces) and, as is my habit, I dumped the leaves into a DT Mason Jar (25 oz) to coldbrew overnight. I want to get every last drop of goodness out of these amazing samples, but I’m way too lazy to gong fu. But I see an order in the near future, once the moneytree comes into bloom.

Ha! I remember now, my public speaking class was a summer course taught by some guy. The only thing I remember from the class is one of the speeches we had to do was a demonstration, and so someone showed how to cut a pineapple. I learned that fresh pineapple makes a hangover much, much worse XD

harvest 6/14
I picked 100g on awesome July Anniversary sale.
I suspect this tea didnt have enough rest and develop the flavors, its kinda one dimensional. it is nice but not wow. based on all raving reviews i had high expectations. ok, i’ll wait. i will revisit it in a 6 months. thankfully i got a lot to experiment.
Gongfu method
6g 100ml gaiwan 195F
rinse/ short steeps

Preparation

This is my second experience of Da Hong Pao (Big Red Robe), thanks to a generous sample from Teavivre. I believe that this one came in the oolong sample pack.

The last time I tried this darker shade of oolong (I believe that one was from Harney & Sons), I appear to have overleafed and oversteeped. Fortunately, boychik corrected the error of my ways, and I am happy to report that I like this tea a lot! I already had three delicious infusions, steeped in a nice ceramic mug with a deep infuser and a lid. It seems the perfect method for preparing multiply infusable oolongs and probably will be my new vessel of choice for this type of tea in the future.

So why is this good? The liquor is dark amber and tastes like a combination of all of the tasting notes listed by everyone else. Basically indescribable, but highly imbibable!

Preparation

It’s actually impossible to overleaf Da Hong Pao. Some people will use up to 12gr in a tiny Yixing. They fill it up, crush the leaves, and then fill it up even more. A lot of “tea masters” tend to do this